A different take on Clover’s demise

Clover was born with a mission: to produce creative, innovative games. Two years ago, Capcom claimed that the industry had grown stale on a diet of recycled sequels and genres and that the time was right to look past muscles, cars, football, and guns and introduce some truly original (obscure) content and ideas into the scene. So starts Clover.

There were some hits on Clover’s part: Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and Okami were all artistically original and were amazingly fresh. The problem is that they were only critical hits. The hardcore and the appreciative loved them. They “got it” because they were fresh, bold, and at times satirical. Nobody else did.

Capcom is after all in the business of making money. It’s only logical that they drop a venture that isn’t profitable anymore. We as gamers can’t really blame them and zealously (fan-boy-ish-ly) call them evil. So what exactly can you blame on Capcom?

The full article awaits after the jump!

Clover was born with a mission: to produce creative, innovative games. Two years ago, Capcom claimed that  the industry had grown stale on a diet of recycled sequels and genres and that the time was right to look past muscles, cars, football, and guns and introduce some truly original (obscure) content and ideas into the scene. So starts Clover.

There were some hits on Clover’s part: Viewtiful Joe, God Hand, and Okami were all artistically original and were amazingly fresh. The problem is that they were only critical hits. The hardcore and the appreciative loved them. They “got it” because they were fresh, bold, and at times satirical. Nobody else did.

Capcom is after all in the business of making money. It’s only logical that they drop a venture that isn’t profitable anymore. We as gamers can’t really blame them and zealously (fan-boy-ish-ly) call them evil. So what exactly can you blame on Capcom?

Luke Plunkett from eToychest may have hit the nail on the head with his unique analysis. Here’s the most pertinent bit of his lengthy article that sums it all up.

“Capcom were, on the one hand, attempting to nurture originality and creativity in games, and yet on the other invested the kind of money, and expected the kind of returns, that only blockbuster titles are capable of recouping,” writes columnist Luke Plunkett. “As a result, Capcom can blame, as they put it themselves, ‘extraordinary losses’ on the decision to close Clover Studio, but in reality they have nobody to blame but themselves.”

If you put “blockbuster money” into an art-house film and expect it and hype it and put your monetary “eggs” into its artsy “basket” and expect to get blockbuster returns, something is wrong with you. Take the Lord of the Rings for example. The story was so off, so geeky, so cult, that no studio at the beginning wanted to work on it. In fact it was filmed one after the other so that the studio could save money. The one time filming of three risky films with separate release dates paid off, because the studios expected that it would be a hit with “just” the geeks.

Capcom created Clover with good intent, but they really didn’t push through with the art-house idea. Commercial expectations and big money went into it. They expected Clover games to be big hits and expected that it be liked by all. Like say, an [insert league] [insert year] sports game. Exactly the opposite direction that a company with innovation and originality in mind.

Sigh. All because there’s not enough football and guns.

Are we as gamers doing the same as Capcom when it comes to our respective fandoms, downloaded homebrew, and preferred genres? Are we to hasty to expect, to quick to ask, and all to fast to condemn things that aren’t useful or appealing to the least common denominator?

Via eToychest